* By default, only the [[Help:namespaces|namespaces]] specified in the search tab of[[Special:Preferences|'''your''' preferences]] will be searched. Logged-in users can change their preferences to specify the namespaces they want to search by default, or if you just want to specify different namespaces for a single search then you can do so on the search results page.

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* By default, only the [[Help:namespaces|namespaces]] specified in the "search" tab of [[Special:Preferences|''your'' preferences]] will be searched. Logged-in users can change their preferences to specify the namespaces they want to search by default, or if you just want to specify different namespaces for a single search then you can do so on the search results page.

* You can also refer to [[help for setting your preferences]].

* You can also refer to [[help for setting your preferences]].

Revision as of 14:05, April 7, 2007

The quickest way to find information on MeritBadgeDot Org is to look it up directly. On the left-hand side of your screen there is a Search box with two buttons under it labeled "Go" and "Search".

Put your keyword in the searchbox.

Go - (or Enter on keyboard) will take you automatically to the article, if it exists.

Search - will search the text of all pages on the wiki (with some restrictions, see below).

If you clicked 'search', or you clicked 'go' and the page you were looking for did not exist, you will be presented with a list of articles that matched your search criteria (or a message that no matches were found).

How it works

Here's how the search works:

Only the article content is searched - the page title is ignored.

The article content is searched in its raw (wikitext) form - i.e. it searches the text that appears in the edit box when you click 'edit', not the rendered page. This means that content coming from an included template will not be picked up, but the target of piped links will be.

Even if you enclose a phrase in quotes, the search looks for each word individually. e.g. if you enter "world war 2" it will return pages that contain "world" and "war" and "2".

The search is not case-sensitive, so "MediaWiki", "mediawiki" and "MEDIAWIKI" all give the same result.

Restricting (or broadening) the search

By default, only the namespaces specified in the "search" tab of your preferences will be searched. Logged-in users can change their preferences to specify the namespaces they want to search by default, or if you just want to specify different namespaces for a single search then you can do so on the search results page.